How Google Nearby Changes the Beacon Marketing Landscape

Partner Opportunity Update - Swirl

· Technology,Innovation

With the recent launch of Google Nearby, a new Android feature that takes advantage of Bluetooth beacons to trigger mobile content based on a user's precise location, Google is single-handedly changing the beacon marketing landscape. Just like Google Search forever changed the online world, Google Nearby is shaking things up in the physical world.

Google Nearby’s most important contribution to beacon marketing is enabling a massive addressable audience. With Google Nearby, shoppers can now receive proximity-triggered relevant mobile content, without needing to have a specific app downloaded on their smartphone. Instead, Google Nearby is embedded directly into the Android OS for Android versions 4.4 and above. So what can Google Nearby actually do? In the simplest terms, when a shopper with an Android smartphone comes within a certain proximity of a Google Eddystone beacon, that beacon owner (e.g. a retailer) can send push notifications to the shopper, that when swiped, can bring the shopper to a mobile website, a deep link into a specific mobile app already on the shopper’s smartphone or even an invitation to download the retailer’s app.

While getting started with Google Nearby is as easy as purchasing a few Eddystone beacons, registering those beacons with Google and adding the relevant content that can be triggered by proximity to these beacons, there are limitations for enterprise-scale retailers. Google Nearby was developed as a technical utility that will help developers get started with Google’s Physical Web. To help enterprise-scale retail marketers take full advantage of the power of Google Nearby, Swirl has developed marketing software and a marketing services layer that sits on top of Google’s tools. With Swirl’s integrated marketing capabilities such as bulk beacon registration, campaign management, robust analytics, real-time program optimization and more, retailers can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their Google Nearby programs.